Hard work, but worth it – mostly.
I downloaded this having watched the BBC adaptation starring the wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch. This is the first of Maddox Ford’s books I’ve read and I’m not sure it’s the best introduction to his work. For a start it’s huge – 906 pages, according to my Kindle. It’s also quite hard going.
Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of Christopher Teijens, the youngest son of an old, respected Yorkshire family. Unhappily married to Sylvia and bringing up a son who might not be his, Christopher finds his head turned by the young Valentine Wannop.
This isn’t an easy book to get into, but it is worth the effort. It is incredibly well written. Christopher goes off to fight in the First World War and the sections on his experiences of trench warfare are some of the best I’ve ever read. At times moving and comic, it conveys both the horror and the stultifying boredom perfectly. Christopher’s frustrations with his commanders and the politicians back home will surely be recognisable to any captain in the field.
There are some great moments of humour, with Sylvia’s arrival at her husband’s barracks almost farcical in its mistaken identities and misunderstandings. None of the characters are particularly likeable, but this didn’t matter. In fact it made more sense than the BBC adaptation, in which Christopher was essentially sympathetic and I couldn’t understand Sylvia’s antipathy towards him. In the book her behaviour is much more understandable.
Sylvia herself is an interesting character. It would have been easy to cast her as The Bitch or The Whore, but she isn’t. She takes lovers throughout her marriage and there is a suggestion that Christopher isn’t the father of her son, yet she isn’t judged by the book. In fact all the women are ‘real’ characters, with their own motivations. A very unusual and refreshing situation.
So why only three stars? The book is seriously let down by the ending. The BBC series finished with the end of the war and the troops coming home. The book, however, carries on with some rather long-winded and to my mind pointless chapters told from the point of view of Christopher’s brother Mark and his French mistress, as well as Valentine and Sylvia. For me this final section put something of a dampener on what was otherwise an excellent book.
No comments:
Post a Comment